The West Pier is really beginning to come together and in this post I begin to put some of the final detailing touches on the apron and determine where and how exactly the airbridges will be fitted. As before Beijing Capital is the guide for the apron patterning.

The shape of my piers introduces a few small challenges around fitting the airbridges which I hope to resolve using balsa wood. Balsa is an easy to use material however it can be a bit fragile, tends to split and it can be hard to get straight edges. What I needed was a way to fit the bridges on so that they were still moveable and fitted snugly against the rounded pier sides. To the left you can see a rough attempt at the jetway-pier connector. A cut piece of balsa with a hand-drilled (literally turned a drill piece by hand) hole in the top for the jetway to fit into.

It still needs a bit of work but below is how it'll roughly fit up against the pier side. I only need these for the narrowbody gates and will probably stick them down to the wood. I am planning on keeping most of the terminal loose from the actual board to enable easier storage but these pieces will prove useful as guides and holds for the pier itself. I'll work to make the fit against the pier more snug and of course they need painting too. Incidentally I need to get some more airbridges as at present I'm borrowing some from Dowse National.

As you can see I have also got the first windows in place on the pier. So far I have only done the pier side - I'm still deciding on the ends.

The other thing I've been working on is the last of the paint pen detailing for the West Pier. Red has been used to outline where the airbridge supports will sit and yellow for cross-hatching to highlight the areas the bridge can be active within. This patterning is taken directly from that seen at Beijing Capital. To do it I obviously had to work out how the airbridges would connect and I think I've got it so that the end A380 gate can dual service the A380 or 757.

This isn't the end for work on the apron as there is still weathering to be done. It's all looking a bit new at the moment.